Exploring Spirituality and Community Insights

Is the World Real? with Swami Medhananda

Swami Medhananda is a monk, philosopher, and Senior Research Fellow at the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He serves as Hindu Chaplain at both UCLA and USC and is Section Editor for the International Journal of Hindu Studies. From 2010 to 2021, he led the Philosophy program at the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute in India. He has authored four books, including Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality and Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism, and has edited several academic volumes. Swami Medhananda earned his PhD from UC Berkeley and has been invited to lecture at institutions such as Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford. His current projects include two forthcoming books with Oxford University Press.

Here Swami Medhananda shares his journey into Vedanta and reflects on the living relevance of Hinduism’s philosophical traditions. He explores the distinctions between Shankara’s Advaita and Ramakrishna’s Vijnana Vedanta, the dance between devotion and nonduality, and how the Gita and Upanishads offer practical guidance. With insight into suffering, identity, and spiritual integration, this conversation invites us to embody pure consciousness in everyday life.

00:00:00 Introduction
00:06:22 Understanding Vedanta: Definitions and key texts
00:09:32 Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta: Core concepts
00:15:38 Jnana Yoga: The path of knowledge
00:23:42 Is full liberation even possible while in the physical body?
00:25:25 Vijnana Vedanta: Embodied spirituality and liberation
00:33:57 Eat sugar or become sugar
00:35:53 Pure consciousness, suffering and the duality of names and forms
00:45:52 How does the ultimate reality relate to this world?
00:47:05 Practical applications of the teachings to navigate suffering
01:05:06 All of life is yoga
01:07:44 The secret of life

New Thinking Allowed Guest Host Leanne Whitney, PhD, is a depth psychologist and transformational coach based in Los Angeles, CA. She is the author of Consciousness in Jung and Patañjali and currently serves as Executive Director of Center for Transformation and Integration. Her website is https://leannewhitney.com/

To learn about Leanne Whitney’s Transformational Coaching Certification Course with an emphasis in Somatic Integration Therapy, please visit: https://transformationandintegration.com/courses

Producer: Elena McNally
Editor: John Hartmann
(Recorded on June 6, 2025)

For a short video on How to Get the Most From New Thinking Allowed, go to https://youtu.be/aVbfPFGxv9o

For a complete, updated list with links to all of our videos, see https://newthinkingallowed.com/Listings.htm.

Check out the New Thinking Allowed Foundation website at http://www.newthinkingallowed.org. There you will find our incredible, searchable database as well as opportunities to shop and to support our video productions – plus, this is where people can subscribe to our FREE, weekly Newsletter and can download a FREE .pdf copy of our quarterly magazine.

To order high-quality, printed copies of our quarterly magazine: NTA-Magazine.MagCloud.com

If you would like to join our team of volunteers, helping to promote the New Thinking Allowed YouTube channel on social media, editing and translating videos, creating short video trailers based on our interviews, helping to upgrade our website, or contributing in other ways (we may not even have thought of), please send an email to friends@newthinkingallowed.com.

To join the NTA Psi Experience Community on Facebook, see https://www.facebook.com/groups/1953031791426543/

To download and listen to audio versions of the New Thinking Allowed videos, please visit our new podcast at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/new-thinking-allowed-audio-podcast/id1435178031.

You can help support our video productions while enjoying a good book. To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: Is There Life After Death? click on https://amzn.to/3LzLA7Y (As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.)

To order the second book in the New Thinking Allowed Dialogues series, Russell Targ: Ninety Years of ESP, Remote Viewing, and Timeless Awareness, go to https://amzn.to/4aw2iyr

To order a copy of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: UFOs and UAP – Are We Really Alone?, go to https://amzn.to/3Y0VOVh

Download and read Jeffrey Mishlove’s Grand Prize essay in the Bigelow Institute competition, Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death, go to https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/docs/1st.pdf

To order Consciousness in Jung and Patañjali by Leanne Whitney, go to: https://amzn.to/2QY3tS2

To order Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism, go to: https://amzn.to/4jEK7e3

To order Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion, go to: https://amzn.to/4n056v4